Quote from a book review:
In the same year that Macfarlane was first shown the Peat Glossary of Lewis, the philological turnstile was cranked into action for a new updated edition of The Oxford Junior Dictionary. Words deemed irrelevant to a 21st-century childhood were removed from the dictionary, while other new coinages gained admission in their place.
When people began to grow alarmed by the deletions from the new edition, Oxford University Press was forced to release a list of words that had been removed. Among them were: ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup, cowslip, cygnet, dandelion, fern, heather, heron, kingfisher, lark, nectar, pasture and willow. New words coming the other way through the turnstile included: attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, celebrity, chatroom, cut-and-paste, MP3 player, and voice-mail.
There is an unavoidably tragic note to the excision of a tree such as "willow" or a waterbird such as "heron" from the linguistic landscape of future generations. Not to mention the removal of the chthonic poetry of "cowslip". One wonders too whether the "cygnet" is not somehow having its very future removed by being cut from the dictionary's pages.
Indeed, Macfarlane's implication in Landmarks is that if there is no need for a cygnet in the lexicon of new generations there may not be any swans around by the time they are old.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/landmarks-review-robert-macfarlane-laments-the-loss-of-the-language-of-nature-20150518-gh2g22.html#ixzz3ue5UuuOV

Karsavina's brother was exiled from Russia by Lenin....
Quote from The Philosophy Steamer: Lenin and the Exile of the Intelligentsia by Lesley Chamberlain, page 114
Lev Karsavin had what could only be called a bizarre experience face to face with his interrogator. His sister Tamara, already world-famous as a ballet dancer, recalled the story he told her when they re-met 'after years of separation'.
He told me of an incident that had happened during his prison days. In the night he was awakened and summoned before the Cheka. These nocturnal examinations were particularly ominous and my brother had incurred their special wrath. The Commissar was stern; he put before my brother one of the incriminating points. 'You are in correspondence with abroad. Who are your correspondents?' 'My sister.' 'What's her name?' 'Same as mine. Karsavina.' 'You are the brother of Karsavina!' The Commissar veered round in his revolving chair. 'Giselle is her best part, don't you think?' 'I can't agree with you,' said my brother. 'I consider the Firebird one of her finest achievements.' 'Oh, do you?' The conversation wandered on to the principles and aims of the art; the prosecution was forgotten. 'Won't you write to your sister?' asked the Commissar at parting. 'Tell her to come back. Tell her she will be received with honours.' My brother's sentence was to be exiled with all his family, the government paying all the expenses.

Still Moving: Pilobolus at Forty: a film by Jeffrey Ruoff
In the 1970s, at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, USA, four male athletes joined a dance class. Their collaborative work led to the creation of Pilobolus and the transformation of modern dance. Pilobolus eschewed the bright lights of Manhattan and settled in rural Connecticut. On the eve of its fortieth anniversary, internationally-renowned, Pilobolus returns to New Hampshire for a Dartmouth-commissioned premiere of a collaboration with cartoonist Art Spiegelman. Still Moving: Pilobolus at Forty focuses on the company’s lifecycle—including a founder’s death—its evolution, transformation, and regeneration. At their studio, on the road, in community workshops, and on stage, the arts organism Pilobolus thrives.
http://www.pilobolusfilm.com/dvd

Lisa Bolte on the mad scene by Behind Ballet, 6 March 2015When I was preparing Giselle for the first time, Maina put me in touch with Svetlana Beriosova, one of the great Giselles, and she talked to me on the phone for two hours, going through every step of the mad scene. She talked about weaving a pattern on the ground with the sword, making the sign of the snake, representing evil.
http://www.behindballet.com/lisa-bolte-on-the-mad-scene/

Does anyone have an opinion on the quality of these dvds?
Restoration drama: bringing Bolshoi ballets back to life
By John Naughton, 01 December 2014, The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/culture/russian-ballet-collection/11263989/restoration-drama-bolshoi-ballet-technology.html
The Russian Ballet Collection
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/culture/russian-ballet-collection/

Ballet Music: A Handbook by Matthew Naughtin (the music librarian of the San Francisco Ballet orchestra)
Part 1 -- How Ballet Works
Part 2 -- Repertoire and Reference
http://www.amazon.com/Ballet-Music-Handbook-Finders/dp/0810886596
From Amazon:
Musicians who work professionally with ballet and dance companies sometimes wonder if they haven’t entered a foreign country—a place where the language and customs seem so utterly familiar and so bafflingly strange at the same. To someone without a dance background, phrases and terms--boy’s variation, pas d’action, apothéose—simply don’t fit their standard musical vocabulary. Even a familiar term like adagio means something quite different in the world of dance. Like any working professional, those conductors, composers, rehearsal pianists, instrumentalists and even music librarians working with professional ballet and dance companies must learn what dance professionals talk about when they talk about music. In Ballet Music: A Handbook Matthew Naughtin provides a practical guide for the professional musician who works with ballet companies, whether as a full-time staff member or as an independent contractor. In this comprehensive work, he addresses the daily routine of the modern ballet company, outlines the respective roles of the conductor, company pianist and music librarian and their necessary collaboration with choreographers and ballet masters, and examines the complete process of putting a dance performance on stage, from selection or existing music to commissioning original scores to staging the final production. Because ballet companies routinely revise the great ballets to fit the needs of their staff and stage, audience and orchestra, ballet repertoire is a tangled web for the uninitiated. At the core of Ballet Music: A Handbook lies an extensive listing of classic ballets in the standard repertoire, with information on their history, versions, revisions, instrumentation, score publishers and other sources for tracking down both the original music and subsequent musical additions and adaptations. Ballet Music: A Handbook is an invaluable resource for conductors, pianists and music librarians as well as any student, scholar or fan of the ballet interested in the complex machinery that works backstage before the curtain goes up.

From the CFA website:
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Desert Island Discs, Radio 4
08 June 2014
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the ballerina Tamara Rojo
Ballerina, Artistic Director at the English National Ballet
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/8a498cbc#b045xz2k